Secret Suffolk and the American watchers

Cobra Mist – Most hush hush

Another curiosity on Orford Ness is the remains of experimental radar station. Build by the British and the US (1960s) it was called Cobra Mist. It is natural to suppose that the Cobra Mist site was set up to eves drop on the Soviets.

Trevor and I had seen the high masts of Cobra Mist when we first visited the Orford last year.  Now on this second, ‘access all areas’ private tour we got closer to it.

Apparently the Anglo-US experiments did not work and the place closed in 1973.

In the 1980’s the site was re-used for the Orford Ness transmitting station. This powerful medium wave radio station - originally owned and run by the Foreign Office, then the BBC and, after privatization in the 1990s, a series of private companies; transmitting the BBC World Service in English around the clock to continental Europe until March 2011.

Cobra Mist has been abandoned since May 2012.

FOOTNOTE: We were exploring in and around Orford Ness and Aldeburgh, with special friends Jane and Trevor, staying in a wonderful Martello Tower, which they had rented to celebrate T’s birthday. 

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Trevor appears several times in this blog in the ‘Travel’s with my Architect’ posts.